Virus Entry Into Cells

This depends largely upon the TYPE of the cell, and of the virus: the cell type has a great deal of influence on the strategy the virus uses to gain access; in turn, specific virus types may employ different strategies to gain access to the same cell type.  However, the greatest commonality in strategy is probably observed between viruses infecting a single broad type of host, defined by the nature of their cell walls: these may be defined as:
 

• bacterial (eg: Eubacteria, Archaea)

• animal (eg: all animal cells)

• plant-like (eg: green multicellular plants, algae, fungi).
  

Gram-negative cell wall

Gram-positive cell wall

Animal cell wall

Plant cell wall

Pictures copyrighted by Russell Kightley

Links which explain the basic structures of these kinds of cells may be found at Wikipedia.

The material here will be divided into the following headings:

BACTERIAL CELL ENTRY

EUKARYOTE CELL ENTRY
Animal Cell Entry
Plant Cell Entry
Fungal Cell Entry